EN-Gage

The Challenge

To design and build a working prototype of an articulating vehicle cluster in just six months ready to display at a major electronic show.

GX has considerable experience in designing innovative control panels for domestic cars having worked alongside Visteon – a global supplier of automotive products, on several previous automotive projects. For this particular project, Visteon wanted to show how in the future cars will rely less upon the driver and more upon sophisticated equipment to take over key driving functions.

The articulating vehicle cluster needed to clearly show when it switched from normal driving mode to autonomous driving. The design that Visteon wanted GX to develop for them included dials that would swivel out of place to allow a tablet to come forward when in autonomous driving mode.

The Solution

Building upon their knowledge of incorporating moving parts into automotive control panels the design team at GX easily solved the issue of how the dials would swivel and move. Resolving the issue of illuminating the touch screen display that moved into place once the dials were out of the way, proved more challenging than the initial design team estimated. The design which the team envisioned called for one of the dials to change into a clock in its new position when the car was in autonomous mode. The electronic engineers got around the initial problem of poor lighting through ingenious optic design. Along various segments of the display they used intricate light guide assemblies to illuminate the display. Each light guide had to seamlessly fit into the other which required many weeks of hard work refining the optics and corresponding electronics.

The Result

By working in unison GX’s electronic engineers and their design engineers developed a design which not only functioned as a working prototype but was finished to a high specification in just six months. The exterior was wrapped in black leather, complete with orange stitching. The dials effortlessly rotated whilst the touch screen display was smoothly and quickly powered into place. The articulating vehicle cluster took pride of place at a major automobile show in January 2015.